A trip to Mousa Broch, Shetland

No trip to Shetland would be complete without a visit to the uninhabited island of Mousa, off the coast of Sandwick. This incredible island, a 15-minute ferry crossing from the mainland, boasts the best-preserved broch that you’ll find anywhere in the world! The island is an RSPB nature reserve and is home to a large colony of storm petrels.

Standing at an impressive 13m (43ft) tall, the broch contains a stone staircase that leads visitors to the top, where you can gaze across the surrounding landscape, with views all the way down the east coast of the South Mainland towards Sumburgh Head, and north towards Cunningsburgh. Mousa Broch features twice in the Norse sagas of the 12th century – in one account, the broch was used as a bolthole for an eloping couple en route to Iceland.

Although the jury is still firmly out on the purpose of brochs, the approaches to Mousa Sound would have been an imposing sight. Not only did the Mousa Broch stand sentry on the island side of the sound, but another broch stood across the water at Burland (HU 44692 23188).

Mousa has been inhabited since Neolithic times, and evidence from this period and the Bronze Age sit alongside the broch. More recently, Mousa was a typical crofting island, supporting up to 11 families (in 1794) before the island was abandoned in 1853. The ruins of the Haa House and the Knowe House stand as a reminder of Mousa’s previous inhabitants. There are also remains of a simple horizontal watermill (also known as a “Norse'' or “click mill”) and a stone building at the West Ham, close to the beaches used for drying fish and where the ferry lands today.

Mousa is also home to an array of wildlife, including one of Britain’s smallest seabirds, the European storm petrel, which returns to its nesting grounds within the walls of Mousa Broch every evening at dusk throughout the breeding season – an incredible culmination of nature and archaeology.

Other wildlife in Mousa includes seals, cetaceans, otters and seabirds such as shags, black guillemots, fulmars, great skuas and Arctic terns. Filling the air with song are wrens, skylarks, snipe, redshank, ringed plover, dunlin and oystercatchers.

Access: The Mousa Boat runs daily trips (except Saturday) from mid-April to October (leaving Sandsayre at 11.30 am, with no booking required), with evening sailings from late May to mid-July to witness the storm petrels (booking is vital for these evening trips).
www.mousaboat.co.uk

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